On Sun, 11 Apr 2010, Marcia J. Bates wrote:

> In my observation, HCI's objective is to develop general principles
> about HCI that are operative across all human-computer situations.
> To many HCI people, information system design is just a trivial
> application of those general principles.  Not so!!!

Of course it depends on the specific definition of HCI used but generally
speaking, it's fair to say that HCI as a discipline has moved on from it's
early focus on the interface and specific interaction aspects such as
Fitts's law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law). It's now widely
recognized that interaction with any kind of interface should not be seen
in isolation from the wider context of use of the system (in design and
evaluation). See for example the Interaction Design texbook by Preece,
Rogers, Sharpe (Wiley). Occasionally there is even criticism that HCI now
focuses too much on individuals and their needs therefore neglecting the
exploration of more general principles.

[...]

> (And because they think of themselves as knowing the general principles,
> they expect us to listen to them, and they don't listen to us.)  For
> heavens' sake, LIS people should not buy into that erroneous assumption!
> Yes, we've been ignored by the disciplines with more money, but that
> doesn't mean we have nothing to contribute.

This is a very interesting comment because my impression is often the
opposite: LIS people forgetting that there are other disciplines out there
that overlap to some significant extent with LIS interests ;-)

christopher


-- 
Dr. Christopher Lueg
Professor of Computing, Univ. of Tasmania
Research Fellow, GSLIS, UIUC (2009-2011)
Adjunct Fellow, HITlab Australia
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